Some plays try to condense a famous person’s life into a digestible, feel-good story. Geva Theatre stages something far more fractured and raw with “Nina Simone: Four Women,” playing through Feb 9.
Part choreopoem, part concert, part living abstract art installation, “Nina Simone: Four Women” is an immersive, emotional glimpse into the life of the jazz singer-songwriter and Civil Rights activist. Then, Charlotte Brathwaite’s direction takes the music and poetry of the thought-provoking script by Christina Ham and turns the volume way up.
The opening evokes a smoky night club as a voiceover introduces “the one and only Nina Simone.” Not one but five actors enter, each in a variation of black performance attire. The actors take their places on a stage stripped of all pretense, with the lighting truss and back walls clearly visible. Four approach the microphone and one takes a seat at the piano.
While each actor is credited as “Nina” in the program, the primary Nina Simone is played by the captivating Garnet Williams, who finds deep compassion behind Nina’s rage. The other three Ninas primarily represent one of the archetypal figures in Simone’s song “Four Women.” Rochester native and Tony and Grammy nominee Kenita R. Miller plays Sarah, the housemaid and auntie who thinks Nina goes too far with the “vulgar” words in her protest songs. Sojourner plays the biracial Sephronia, an activist who thinks Nina doesn’t go far enough in supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Hillary Jones plays Sweet Thing, a churchgoing sex worker who doesn’t see herself represented in the movement. Careful attention to unify them while honoring their differences is given by both costume designer Marsha Ginsberg and hair and wig designer Cassie J. Williams.
These four women come together after the September 16, 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young Black girls. They clash with each other and question how to move forward. They interrogate Nina, who wants to channel her rage at the Birmingham bombing into a new song.
“Someone has got to say the unspeakable when something horrific happens,” she says.
Theater has the power to say the unspeakable, and this play offers visceral theatricality at its finest, starting on a visual level. The scenic and lighting design are both by Kent Barrett, who could better be described as a shadow designer. Light enters from surprising angles, such as from the side of the stage or a swinging light fixture. The show opens with the shadows of the heads of the four women filling the stage. Images of both Nina and the four young victims of the Birmingham church bombing get projected to the far wall, appearing as shadows on the actors’ faces. It creates a haunting effect that turns the stripped down stage into an ephemeral space where pain is felt, memories haunt and songs get written.
The show never forgets that for Nina Simone, music was activism. Though not a musical in the traditional sense, the show includes 13 musical numbers, ranging from Nina Simone originals like “Mississippi Goddam” and the titular “Four Women” to traditional spirituals or hymns. All four actors have mesmerizing voices. Miller delivers a jaw-dropping “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” and Williams does Nina justice with their earthy, richly expressive tone.
Additional music was composed by music director Justin Hicks, sound designer YATTA (aka ricky sallay zoker), and pianist X’ene Sky, whose playing is stirring and evocative. She uses her entire body to gut the upright for all its worth, even taking off the case for better access to the strings.
Ultimately, the play is about Nina’s journey towards embracing herself in a world that “has never been kind to the real Black-looking women.” This feels particularly poignant given a persistent bias against darker skinned Black people — in 2016, the biopic “Nina” was criticized for casting the light-skinned Afro-Latina Zoe Saldaña as Simone. This play unflinchingly depicts the colorism that splits the four women, without denying any of them the humanity of their Blackness.
The impressive performances must be emotionally taxing for the actors, who never break focus. Even during the curtain call, they don’t smile or bow. The five performers stare out at the audience as though they don’t hear the well-earned thunderous applause — as if they don’t realize the play is over, as if they see no difference between Nina’s tumultuous 1960s and the America waiting for us all when the house lights go up.
“Nina Simone: Four Women” runs through Feb. 9. More details and tickets here.
Katherine Varga is a freelance contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
